Comments on: Expressvu (Bell) PVR – Upgrade Your Receiver with an External Hard Drive

By: Heather

Heather — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 01:28:56 +0000

Hello,
I am in the process of deciding what to do pvr or external hard drive? I was wondering if it is possible to get an external hard drive that is mac friendly. so I could watch the recording on my computer? Is that even possible? Thank you for your time.
Heather

By: John

John — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:21:39 +0000

To answer Gloria’s question, the 3100 does not support PVR which is why it doesn’t have a USB port. As such you cannot connect the harddrive from your 6131.

However, I have a similar question along those lines. I would like to take the HDD w. recorded programs from one 6131 and plug it into different 6131 receiver. Does anyone know if the encrypted content is unique to each receiver? I don’t have a 2nd 6131 but would like to get one if this is possible so that I can watch programs in a different room.

Thanks

By: Del

Del — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:47:54 +0000

You should be able to turn off the external drive without an issue, as long as you are not archiving or playing back from it at the time. A message will come up that a multimedia device was disconnected. Carry on as normal. When you switch on the external drive, a message will come up stating a multimedia device has been found and if you want to access it.

I have been switching my external drive off and on for months without any issues at all.

By: Jay

Jay — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 22:12:25 +0000

I bought a 1 TB Ultra Speed brand external Hard Drive from Walmart for $88 +tax and hooked it to my Bell 6131 HD receiver and it works fine. But it does not power down even after the receiver is switched off.
If the hard drive is left ON all the time then this will shorten the life of it. Also there is a ON / OFF switch at the back of the hard drive, is it wise to just switch it OFF from there? Your comments on these issue will be very much appreciated.

By: Gloria

Gloria — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:42:53 +0000

I replaced my 3100 with a 6131, and like you, upgraded to PVR with an external hard drive (and loving it). Here’s my question: I want to be able to attach my hard drive to the old 3100 in order to watch recorded movies, but the 3100 has no USB. Is there an adaptor that would work? Or another way to accomplish this? (I tried using my laptop as a receiver but that didn’t work, due to difference in file types, I was told.
Please keep your answer simple, as I am a tech-dummy.
Thanks!

By: Helpme

Helpme — Fri, 28 May 2010 18:12:43 +0000

I bought and hooked up a Seagate 1TB external hard drive for my Bell 6141 receiver. Worked great for a month and a half but now in playback it freezes up. I just now found in my many searches on the good old internet it doesn’t like sleep mode so I hooked it up to my computer and changed it to never. Plugged it back into the receiver recorded a show to see if that would “fix” it and it still sticks on playback. Help……………

By: EYEINTHESKY

EYEINTHESKY — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:26:41 +0000

Hi guys , I just connected my 1TB Seagate hard drive to my Bell HD receiver this morning. I must admit I was quite impressed with how simple the entire process was. Does anyone know if it’d be possible to connect and burn movies with an external DVR?

By: bwheeler

bwheeler — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:31:40 +0000

Dave, that’s the problem with the free agent. They have “sleep mode” or “power save” mode which causes them to power down. Bell doesn’t recommend drives with this feature.

By: kwazoo

kwazoo — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:24:28 +0000

FYI…. the Bell 6131/6141 HD PVR receiver was being blown out at FShop/BestBuy over Boxing day for $99. I added one to my account and a Seagate 500G portable HD. The Bell box formats the Hard drive with Linyx partitioning and can not be used with a PC for transferring files etc. unless it is reformatted for PC use by a PC. Then you lose all data from the PVR. It’s best to use it exclusively for Sat TV. So don’t break the bank on an expensive external HDD unless you spend a lot of time PVR-ing HD content.

Go Canada !!!

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:34:52 +0000

I bought a Seagate Free agent 1TB, installed on the 6141 receiver, worked great. But the hard drive will not power down after I turn the receiver off. I think this will be hard on the hard drive, may shorten the life on it. To me there’s a software problem with Bell. I unplug the hard drive, but this is a pain going behind my system. Can you give me some incite on this?
Thanks
Dave